iPad trial – first steps

One of the last things Nick did before taking up his new post was to set up what would turn out to be three separate iPad trials in the school.

The first involves members of the schools senior and extended leadership team using the devices primarily as a productivity tool. The second involved buying iPads and Apple TVs for 5 staff in different departments to trial as a teaching and learning tool. The third was the purchase of four iPads for the new Learning Centre.

Having never been the world’s greatest iPad fan (I love macs to pieces, but find the whole locked down nature of iOS frustrating), this had meant I’ve had to a lot of reading up in the last couple of weeks, so I thought it might be useful to share what I’ve found so far

Management

I considered three options for managing the devices. I rejected Apple Configurator primarily as it needed the devices to be synced to a particular machine. This might be great for classroom deployment, but would cause us problems as we went. I rejected using the schools mac server simply because it looked too complicated to get my head around in the limited amount of time I have. It’s something I’ll investigate as the year goes on, and we may move to next year.

I settled on using the free online Meraki platform (many thanks to those who suggested it on Twitter). It allows you to set security settings, and push apps to the iPads remotely, and allows us to ‘tag’ different devices and so create different settings for each group. This will be particularly important as some of the devices that are being used are personal devices used in school, rather than school provided devices. It also works with the new Apple Volume licensing system.

Apps

So far we’ve only loaded free apps. While Apple Volume Licensing is a welcome addition, it requires schools to have a credit or debit card, which many don’t. As a work around, we’re looking to use iTunes gift cards to facilitate purchasing!

Based on reviews from various websites, I’ve installed the following as a first batch to be experimented and reviewed by staff and students

Paper by Fifty Three

Brushes 3

Edmodo

Popplet Lite

Skitch

iBooks

Doc Scan HD

Pocket Wavepad HD

Google Translate

Google Earth

Goodnotes Free

Educreations Interactive Whiteboard

iMindMap HD

Quizlet

Total Recall Mindmap

Corkulous

Learn Spanish (Mindsnacks)

Learn French (Mindsnacks)

Sticky Notes

BBC News

K12 Periodic Table

Revision App

Lumosity Brain Trainer

Maths Wiz Free

Links

I found the following websites particularly useful in researching the project so far